Ukraine’s Deadly New combo
A-22 Aircraft, towing Kamikaze Glider strikes Russian facility.
This article will also be contained in today’s Brief
On Sunday, June 15, 2025, the Ukrainian Defense Forces launched a new strike on the so-called "the Alabuga free economic zone" - one of two locations where long-range kamikaze drones of the "Shahed" type, which have the russian name the Geran-2, are produced on the territory of the russian federation.
Initially, the media voiced the assumption that the A-22 aircraft was involved in this strike as an unmanned bomber.
However, later the telegram channel "Colonel of the General Staff" published an analysis, from which it follows that for this strike a connection was used in the composition of the A-22 aircraft and a kamikaze glider with a 100-kilogram warhead, which is confirmed by the published photo (Photo 1).
In particular, this post also states that towing gliders by an aircraft is a typical scheme for their removal to the echelon, where after undocking they make an independent flight due to air currents (Photo 2). The glider does not have an engine, so after undocking in the area of the target it immediately heads towards it. At the same time, a glider without a pilot allows to carry a combat load of up to 100 kg.
"Thanks to the use of such a scheme, you can hit two objects at once at a great distance from the line of combat contact with a relatively large equivalent of explosives," this post also says.
The Defense Express analysis shows that until now, the use of the "drone-kamikaze as a tug + glider-kamikaze as an additional combat unit" scheme has not been recorded in the world. There is also currently no other evidence of the use of a glider as an unpowered kamikaze aircraft.
During the Second World War, when the Allies used landing gliders towed by C-47 transport aircraft to open a second front in Europe during large-scale landing operations.
It is an interesting and open question how large-scale and effective the described scheme of drone attacks on military facilities in the territory of the russian federation can be. To understand the possible consequences of such use, we can start from the assessments of the Dnipro OSINT community, which indicate that as a result of the Ukrainian drones hitting the Alabuga, two workers were killed as well as 14 were injured, among those involved in the production process in this production area.
This is amazing Grumpy. With Russia down 3 AWACs there must be exploitable holes in air defense. No place in Russia is safe from Ukraine.
As an aside gliders were default part of airborne operations in WW2. Among other things they brought in the heavier equipment (the Brits even devised a light tank for the purpose) that couldn't be dropped with the paratroopers, as well as follow-up waves of combat infantry without all the specialised training of the paras. The Germans called theirs "Luftlande-divisionen" (lit. "airlanding divisions") and also used glider deployment for daring commando raids where precise control of the landing spot was vital - the assault on the key Belgian border fortress of Eben-Amel at the start of the war (where the commandos literally landed on the roof of the fort and used shaped-charge explosives to knock out the turrets) and the raid that busted Mussolini out of his mountain prison later on are probably the most famous cases.